A disturbing new trend in organized crime has emerged across France, where law enforcement officials confirmed Thursday that more than 40 cases of kidnapping and illegal confinement linked to cryptocurrency extortion have been recorded since the start of 2025. This sharp rise in violent targeting of digital asset holders marks a rapid expansion of a criminal tactic that was virtually unheard of before 2024.
French judicial and interior ministry authorities outlined the growing threat to reporters this week, noting that the wave of targeted abductions began gaining traction in late 2024, when criminal networks first began focusing on wealthy cryptocurrency investors and their families. What was once a marginal criminal activity has exploded in frequency: just 30 cases were reported across all of 2024, a figure that has already been surpassed in the first four months of 2025 alone.
Philippe Chadrys, deputy national director of France’s judicial police, explained that the criminal networks behind these attacks typically operate with a distributed structure, with masterminds based outside of France coordinating local henchmen, who often only receive their target’s identity at the last minute. Attacks have targeted a wide range of people connected to the crypto space, from individual retail holders with large digital asset portfolios to senior executives at major institutional cryptocurrency firms. Not all incidents end in abduction, Chadrys added, with some attempts resulting in extortion or theft without prolonged confinement.
Annabelle Vandendriessche, who leads the interior ministry’s Service for Information, Intelligence, and Strategic Analysis on Organised Crime (Sirasco), confirmed the rapid growth of the phenomenon, saying it remained a niche threat just 12 months ago before becoming a major priority for law enforcement this year.
Recent high-profile cases underscore the severity of the threat. On Monday this week, a woman and her 11-year-old son were abducted in France’s central Burgundy region, with kidnappers issuing a demand for cryptocurrency ransom. A coordinated operation involving roughly 100 law enforcement officers located and freed the pair by Tuesday, with seven men taken into custody in connection with the crime.
Earlier this month, on April 10, five abductors carried out an attack in the southern French coastal town of Anglet, targeting a known cryptocurrency investor. The group stole luxury jewelry, personal electronics including computers and phones from the property, but they ultimately failed to capture their intended target. Law enforcement intercepted the five suspects at Paris’s Montparnasse train station following the mistaken-target error.
The most violent case to date dates back to January 2025, when kidnappers seized David Balland, co-founder of leading cryptocurrency hardware firm Ledger— a company that was valued at over $1 billion at the time of the attack. During his confinement, Balland’s captors cut off one of his fingers to pressure him into paying a massive crypto ransom, while his girlfriend was bound and locked in the trunk of a car left outside Paris. Balland was rescued by authorities the day after his abduction.